Cassette Tapes

suziewuzie

I have loads of these to get rid of - some prerecorded, some home recorded - sorting out deceased relatives belongings. Can they be recycled/reused in anyway.

Grateful for any advice.:o

belfastgirl23

Worth leaving prerecorded into a second hand shop. We have a very old car with only a tape deck/radio in it and are always pleased to pick up a few old tapes...

Ben84

I work in one of the well known charity shops and we're thankful for any donations of prerecorded music tapes and VHS videos. They don't sell for high prices, but customers are still buying them.

Classical on tape is the exception, customers very rarely buy them as classical buyers prefer the higher quality sound of vinyl and CD. Most charity stores throw classical tapes away as they simply don't sell.

Also home recorded and non-VHS tapes like betamax or V2000 unfortunately have no value to most charity shops as very few people still own machines to play these.

We have looked in to recycling tapes, but they're mostly made from polystyrene plastic cases which have minimal recycling potential, and they contain a lot of small mixed plastics and metals that have little value and would need labor intensive sorting. We get through a lot of tapes each year and still haven't found any viable place for them except the landfill, and with the numbers of tapes being thrown out reducing, I suspect there will never be any recycling facilities for them.

all_change

found it... there's a company in Ross on Wye in Herefordshire which does this... (there may be others):

https://www.keymood.co.uk

HTH

DwainDibley

Try putting them on Freecycle - I'm sure someone would make good use of them. Like a previous poster I still have a radio casetter player in my car, though I tend to listen to the radio mostly anyway - but there are plenty of people who would be grateful for some casettes!

suziewuzie

Thanks all - sorry for delay in replying - internet has been down for a couple of days.

Will probably go with the charity shop option as the recycling company (keymood) seems more industrial than domestic, and also it is a long way from me. Great to see that these things are beginning to be recycled, though.

Cheers.